Dear Dr. Carson:
You are are a good example of what is right with Christianity and the United States of America. As a communicator, only Governor Huckabee and Senator Rubio can match or surpass you. Your life story, where everyone underestimated you at every life step while God and grit pulled you through, should be required reading for every American youngster. Dr Carson, there is little doubt that you are one of the smartest, most decent, and virtuous men running this year. Anybody who doesn’t like you is never going to vote Republican anyway.
And yet I am not about to vote for you in the primaries, though you would get my vote against Hillary Clinton in the general election. You are an example of what is wrong with present politics: the celebrity that thinks he can start at the top. You risk being the Donald with more brains, better hair, and virtue.
Why?
You are unqualified for the office you seek and I refuse to demean you by pretending otherwise.
You lack the knowledge we expect from a serious candidate. Are you smart enough to be President? You are more than smart enough to be President of the United States, but you chose a different path decades ago. Just as Jeb Bush should not go back to school to become a brain surgeon at his age, so you should not try starting at the top of an entirely different profession at yours. Sadly, you have shown gaps in your knowledge of foreign and domestic policy, not surprising in a brilliant man coming late to a different field, but those gaps are fatal in a candidate for leader of the free world.
We don’t have time for on-the-job training facing Putin, ISIS, and North Korea.
You have an almost total lack of executive experience. There is a difference between being brilliant and being the man. You are brilliant, but can you tame a great bureaucracy? Can you negotiate with allies and enemies in Congress to get your agenda passed? Can you? How would we know? The just will live by faith, but faith is reasonable hope. We hope you could do all those things, but there is no reason from your career to think you could. You have no relevant experience running anything.
Sadly, Dr. Carson your lack of political experience suggests that the Clinton machine would surgically operate and pith any campaign you started. They are brutal and you have no experience dealing with a Machine that has sent many experienced politicians to retirement. You cannot win and whatever that may say about our present system (and it is nothing good), we must vote based on present reality, not our Utopian dreams.
You show a serious lack of preparation for the massive media assault that occurs when a man or woman is a Republican running for office. You give a great speech, but I am not sure you are any better at taking questions from the press than Clinton . . . and that is not a good thing. You have Clinton’s tendency to gaffe without her years spent thinking, breathing, and living politics. This might make you a better person than she is, but it does not make you a better candidate.
You have to win to govern and to win you must neutralize the media. Romney never could and Romney is Reagan compared to your media skills.
Finally, your candidacy splits the social conservative movement again. You are such a good man and able speaker that you will get votes, money, and support, but these votes, money, and support will be siphoned away from more plausible candidates. Governor Huckabee is more qualified. Governor Walker is equally conservative with broader appeal. Senator Rubio has a dynamic life story, but one that was dedicated to the proper field.
Your heroic life cannot be diminished by this run. You are such a noble man. I hope I am wrong about all of this, but I doubt it. Politics is a field that requires a lifetime to master and we do not have a lifetime to give you. I am sorry, Dr. Carson.
Under the Mercy,
John Mark N. Reynolds
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